For the most time, I've been firmly in the largest camp when it comes to the Mono debate - the 'I don't care'-camp. With patent lawsuits being hotter than Lady Gaga right now, that changed. For good reason, so it seems; while firmly in the 'ZOMG-MICROSOFT-IS-T3H-EVILL!1!!ONE!'-camp, The-Source.com investigated the five most popular Mono applications, and the conclusion is clear: all of them implement a lot of namespaces which are not covered by Microsoft's community promise thing.

In previous Mono threads we've also been over the fact that the ECMA 335 and 336 are only covered by an extremely flimsy RAND agreement that the ECMA requires. It doesn't stop anyone claiming patents on the specifications at all. All that happens is that the standards can be dropped from the ECMA leaving everyone in the brown stuff.

That's why Microsoft and other companies love the ECMA and why the CLR and CLS specifications have not gone through other standardisation processes, such as ISO.

The only thing Mono advocates consistently try and point us to this idiotic Mono FAQ that says that there are somehow patented and non-patented bits. Not only do we see Mono and open source applications using questionable namespaces that you need that the ECMA specs [deliberately] don't specifiy but the situation is open to being much, much worse.